[Being privileged extracts from two of next season's War Romances.]
From Pot-bank and Potsdam:—
Edwin Clayhanger strolled dully down the Square. A squat dirty boy shrieked: "Sentinel. Result of Bursley Match. War News—Official." Edwin snatched a pink paper and under an anti-Zeppelin gas-lamp read that Knipe had defeated Bursley Rovers by four goals to none. He crumpled the paper in his hand and threw it disgustedly into the gutter, outside Bates the cheesemonger's. Sam Bates emerged, picked up the paper and confided to his assistant that "Young Edwin's brain is going, like old Mr. Clayhanger's."
Chill mists enveloped the pot-banks. The glare of the Hanbridge furnaces was subdued to a faint glimmer. The shout of a laughing crowd outside the Blood Tub drew Edwin closer. He perceived in the midst of the throng an elephant covered with Union Jacks. On its back stood Denry Machin, the famous Card of the Five Towns, thrice Mayor of Bursley.
"Boys," cried the Card, "you can see the circus elephant free. You can listen to me free. Hanbridge is going to raise a Pot-bank Company for Kitchener's Army. They want us to raise one to match it. We're going one better. Bursley will raise a Pot-bank Regiment. I just want a thousand men to be going along with. Don't all speak at once."
The crowd shrieked with laughter at Bursley's only humorist.
Edwin Clayhanger thought deeply. For three years he had been waiting to marry Hilda Lessways. Now the thought of 528 pages of married life with her overwhelmed him. Up went his hand.
"We're doing fine," cried the Card. "Nine hundred and ninety-nine more and off we march to Potsdam in the morning."
From The Military Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes:—
I shrank down into a corner of the reserve trench. The fifteen inches of half-frozen mud caused my old wound from an Afghan bullet to ache viciously. I longed for some wounded to arrive—anything to end this chilly inactivity. A tall officer in staff uniform jumped into the trench beside me.